Hardware
I'm back!! Today, we're going to be discussing the hardware I had throughout the late '90s and early '00s.
To start things off, here's my old TV.
(This is not my image, because... you know...)
It's a 1996 Panasonic PV-M1345 CRT TV. This was my parents' TV back in Japan. This is the TV I watched Super Friends and Rugrats on, and my parents watched Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Ren & Stimpy on. We also used the built-in VCR to record the 1996 Summer Olympics. (According to my parents, I liked the swimming parts, and I would go "SWIM SWIM SWIM!!" whenever that was on.) My first VHS I ever got was the Sesame Street VHS "Quiet Time," it really being the only Sesame VHS I ever had until later on.
Here was the computer my parents had in 1996...
(Again, not mine, because a. we threw it out a long time ago, and b. you know.)
No, you are not seeing that incorrectly. That is a NEC PC-9821 Ce2. And I know what you're thinking, and we're gonna get to that real quick. Anyway, it ran Windows 95, even though the thing itself was from 1994.
OK, I know what you're thinking. No, it was not rare at all to have a PC-98 if you were from Japan like my parents, and we did NOT have Touhou. Touhou was a mail-order only game, or you bought them at Comiket, sort of like The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak. I DID go to preschool with a Japanese friend whose quite dirty older sister liked Touhou (presumably because of mail-order), but that's another story.
Anyway, back to more hardware goodness. Around 2000, we gave up our Panasonic and went for a sleek and sensible Toshiba.
(Not mine. Again, because... YOU KNOW.)
This was a Toshiba CZ36V61. As you can see by the photo, it DIDN'T come with a VCR. But this was the TV I have the fondest memories of, because it was the one we had for the longest. This was the TV I first saw Swayzak on in 2002. This was the TV I saw Moloko's "Fun For Me" video on so many times. I would sit down in front of the TV in our living room and watch Saturday morning cartoons, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, and many others RIGHT ON THIS TV. I loved it.
Here's the VCR we had...
(How many times do I have to teach you this lesson? It's not mine, and YOU KNOW WHY.)
As you can see, it's a Samsung VR8160. This was an expert at recording. My mom would help me do the VCR programming when I wanted to record a favorite show, and later on, my mom would tape shows FOR me, stopping it when there were commercials (because she knew I hated them.) One of my favorites is a recording of the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! episode "Frog Wild," with the label on the tape reading "Kirby... what the?!" Keep in mind, this was my MOM writing this. Even she was surprised that a kids' show could do a disturbing episode like this. (However, she wasn't surprised with Invader Zim... go figure!!) Eventually, I started using TiVo to tape shows, mainly ones WITHOUT commercials. This VCR is also where I watched several good movies on VHS, like Spider-Man, Batman & Robin, and Pokémon: The First Movie.
Here's the DVD player we got...
(*sigh* Not mine.)
It's a Toshiba SD-2006, and it was actually the first DVD player released to the consumer market, in 1997. We were a little late to the game, since we bought it in August 2000. Look at how HUGE the thing is!! Can you imagine them releasing that in the modern day and age?! I remember on the Batman & Robin VHS, there was a commercial for this player. I'm going to link it here so you can see how cheesy it is...
YEAH!! Can you just FEEL the cutting-edge, sense-expanding sharpness of DVD?! This is a "Butterfly 747" moment we've got goin' on, folks!! ...Yeah, looking back, DVD wasn't all that great in the early '00s. Sure, it was clearer than VHS, but DVDs were just so rare to come across. The only DVDs we had back then were old shows my parents watched (I seem to remember Maude being one of them), myriad Adult Swim shows, and complete season sets of cartoons like SpongeBob (because complete season sets were never released on VHS.) By 2006, when VHS was becoming obsolete, we started buying more DVDs, as the format became more commonplace in households. The first DVD I ever got was a complete series set of Pink Lady and Jeff (because my parents LOVED Pink Lady, and I did, too.)
Here's the computer we got in 2000.
(What did I tell you? It's not mine, not mine, not mine! NOT MINE!!)
It was a Dell OptiPlex GX200. It originally ran Windows ME, but we said "fuck that" in 2001 and got Windows XP Professional. That Windows XP brought back some memories... I would use Netscape Navigator to browse Cartoon Network's website and, of course, play Toonami's "Trapped in Hyperspace" online game. Swayzak with a New Zealander accent was hot beyond belief, but I already covered that in a different topic. I also loved playing the SpongeBob game "Flip or Flop" on Nick's website, watching Six Flags ride videos, and later on, browsing YouTube (when I upgraded to Internet Explorer.)
By 2009, things were changing radically in the Takemoto household. We put our CRT TV in storage to get a nice, shiny new FLATSCREEN TV!!
(What, you thought that was my photo?! Well, it's NOT!!)
It was a Samsung LN32B360. This TV was still in use as of 2018, and I bet my parents still watch it even now. When this debuted at our house, things kinda died a little inside of me. Gone was the TV I treasured so much, and all those hours I spent watching CN, Kids' WB, and Nick. But things were changing, and I knew to be flexible. I started watching Food Network on this TV in order to learn how to cook.
Also replacing our clunky DVD player and VCR was this Blu-Ray player...
(Yeah, that's not mine. Stop asking.)
It's an LG BD-370. We started getting all our movies and TV shows on Blu-Ray, and shows that didn't have a complete series release were now getting them on this format. Eventually, feeling homesick, I brought out my Samsung VCR and connected that to the Samsung flatscreen TV. My parents would watch Blu-Ray, and I would watch VHS. We continued like that until I moved out.
In 2009, we also got a new computer.
(Not mine... of course.)
It was a Dell Inspiron 537 running Windows 7. Google Chrome was what I used to browse the Web, normally looking at YouTube and deviantART. I was 13, and I started learning Python in order to make something of myself. I have made at least one computer virus using Python, by the way, and tested it in a VM. I called it "Swayzak." That was in 2014.
(You really thought that was mine? LMAO.)
It was a Dell OptiPlex 3040. This was the final PC I was around for, and it ran Windows 10, the latest OS, to boot. I really felt dead inside with this. I missed the old OptiPlex, which we had given away by then, and I was not about to accept change. (That's the problem with autistics. They dislike change.) So my parents mainly used it.
Then I got this...
(Okay... that is mine.)
It's a MacBook Pro from mid 2015. Doesn't say the model, but it used to run High Sierra before I updated it with every passing new edition. Whatever, it's just a shitty Mac that I never really took good care of because ignorance is bliss. It's my own laptop. Probably gonna get a new one soon.
The last thing I wanna show you is a special piece of history that has been cherished throughout my household since 1996...
(For the last time... that's not mine.)
It was a Sanyo MCD-S660 CD player, which doubled as a radio and a cassette player. My parents had this in Japan, and when we moved, we brought it over. Rarely used the radio but I loved the CD player. I used to listen to Moloko's first album, the Powerpuff Girls albums, and more with this thing. We finally trashed it in 2016, and it was the end of an era. Well, it wasn't working, anyway, and radio became obsolete by then.
I hope you enjoyed this retrospective on retro hardware I had!! See you on the next post!!
(PS: If you're unable to execute an elif or else command on Python, and none of the solutions are working, please use the online compiler. (^^;))
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